


Time-Turner and TARDIS

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 07:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3319682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes about Hermione Granger watching Doctor Who, from childhood to middle age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time-Turner and TARDIS

**Author's Note:**

> First, it seemed pretty likely that Hermione would be a Doctor Who fan once I thought about it for more than a minute: geeky, Muggle parents, right timeframe, committed to social justice, takes naturally to time-travel and larger-on-the-inside contrivances, etc.
> 
> Second, I actually did try to make sure that the timelines matched up, but please let me know if there are any particularly dreadful errors.
> 
> Third, the character lists are deliberately incomplete. Spoilers...

“I'm just not sure it's the sort of thing we should be exposing our daughter to,” her mother frets. Hermione hangs at the fringe of the room, hoping that something Not Allowed might be happening, a hope secret even from herself.

“I was the same age when I watched William Hartnell go after a caveman with a rock,” her father counters.

Her mother rolls her eyes. “I meant the quality of the program—have you seen his coat? And the way he treated Peri?”

“You know there's a new Doctor, don't you?” her father points out. And that was how Hermione Granger came to watch the first installment of Time and the Rani. 

***

Afterwards, it was every Saturday night like clockwork. Hermione always had her homework done well in advance, and no matter how good her current book might be (Redwall had been particularly hard to put down, even for half an hour), she and her parents would curl up on the sofa together.

***

“Come on, Ace; we've got work to do.” The words echoed pleasantly in her mind. There was no doubt in her mind that there would be many more adventures yet to come, she thought, opening The Wizard of Oz to where she had left off. 

Then there weren't. The shock pushed her into nonfiction for two full years. 

That was when an owl landed on her windowsill with a letter from a school called Hogwarts. 

***

She devoured the novels as they came out, of course. Reading was her first love, after all. But when she heard that there was a pilot for a revival, she couldn't help but be excited. 

“Well, that was shit,” Ron said. The worst part was that she couldn't disagree.

***

 

“It's a minotaur,” Luna said excitedly.

“Nimon,” Hermione corrected absently. She'd gone back to Hogwarts for her NEWTs, and Luna and Ginny had agreed to join her for a marathon session on her parents' old tapes to celebrate, now that they were finished.

“You know who would like these?” Ginny says, chewing on a fingernail. “My dad.”

***

If anyone asked, the fact that her daughter's name was Rose was an homage to a great-aunt whom Hermione had had fond memories of featuring butter brickle candy and a cottage by the sea. Conception during 2005 was irrelevant. 

***

It wasn't that she was glad to see David Tennant take a break from the role in 2008. But it did give her the free time she needed to finish her modern translation of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

***

She didn't watch the specials—in fact, she wasn't sure that she was going to pick the show back up after what had happened to Donna. But Rose had begged, and there was going to be a new Doctor, after all. It took her just long enough for the TARDIS to crash into Amelia Pond's garden before she remembered why exactly the show had had its hooks into her for so long.

***

Ginny's guess had been quite correct—Arthur Weasley loved Doctor Who. “What a strange sort of wand!” 

“It's a sonic screwdriver,” she corrected automatically.

Arthur's face turned pale and drawn. “Is that more like a phillips or a...fathead?”

“Neither,” she said with a laugh.

“Mom, grandad, be quiet!” Rose chided them as the episode begins. They all do a double-take from the sofa. 

“Well, that's uncanny,” Hermione says softly as they meet Brian Williams for the first time. Rose reaches into a bowl of sweets on the coffee table and unwraps a Chocolate Frog with nervous hands; the enchanted candy darts away before she can pop it into her mouth. Just as well, Hermione thinks, it would have ruined her appetite. “Who did you get today?” she asks.

“Another Merlin,” Rose says sourly. “You can have him. Don't know why there are so many of him.” 

She'd never acquired the taste for Chocolate Frogs—biting into something which was still squirming in your hands still sent shivers down her spine, and she'd faced down an army of Death Eaters. And so she'd never collected the cards—it wasn't as though she didn't have all the information you could fit on the piddling scraps of cardboard in a proper book, anyway. And so she was pleasantly flabbergasted when a familiar face peeped back at her from the portrait. Her jaw shut as Patrick Troughton waved goodbye, only to be replaced by Jon Pertwee. Of course the Doctor was Merlin, or Merlin was the Doctor. Or it was all a bloody great coincidence. “Dinosaurs! On a spaceship!” Matt Smith cries on screen, and her laughter mingles with her family's.

***

The Master regenerates into a woman just in time for Helga to announce that she is actually a boy. “Fortunately,” Hermione tells her son, “there's a spell for that.”

***

The children have run ahead with their dad, and Hermione follows briskly behind, not quite watching where she is going, when she smacks into a shorter gentleman. The impact knocks them both down, and strews the contents of her diaper bag across the path. “How do you fit everything in there?” he asks worriedly.

“Oh, it's bigger on the inside,” she says lazily. Which is the truth, as it happens. But most Muggles just assume that she's a fangirl with a knack for organization. 

The man's eyes go wide, and he nearly grabs the bag from her before settling to help her repack it and sort through their belongings. “I don't come here often,” he says. “But today I fancied catching up on an old favorite.” He gestures carelessly with a book, and, as he meets her eyes, he goes pale again. “You! You're her!” He points to the cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Her jaw drops. “You're him!” She points to the cover of Human Nature. Her Doctor. Here, in the flesh.

They spend the next several minutes babbling incoherently and cramming things back into her bag. Occasionally they stop to pinch the other, or themselves. “So,” he says at last. “The TARDIS is just behind that copse of trees, if you'd like.”

“Can you get me back to the same time?” she asks, not sure if she cares what the answer is.

“Of course,” he promises. “I've gotten much better at piloting her.”

“One trip,” she says firmly.

“One trip,” he agrees, taking his umbrella in one hand, and hers in the other. As they run, she is seven all over again.


End file.
